Shielding

 Other people's shielding can hurt.  And they have no self-awareness of it.  To make them aware, to turn their own shields to face them, could injure them, so we hesitate to do it, but I'm nearly past that civility.

I swallow my truth a lot, and always have.  Self-abandonment is a survival method for those of us brought up by narcissists in violent, alcoholic households where truth-telling was a very dangerous proposition.  We learned to eat our feelings (for me this was literal.  I developed an overeating habit that resulted in an on-again, off-again flirtation with obesity and a dance with self-hatred lasting most of my life because of that).

But I am so tired of this habit of swallowing truth that I am nearly ready to let people have my truth even when I know they are unaware of the hurt they are inflicting and that the knowledge will hurt them.  Truth hurts.  But those of us with cancer are hurting enough already.

This came into focus for me when a cancer free friend, B,  was driving another friend and I home (Roz and I, who live down the street from one another, coincidentally both have glio blastomas). Roz remarked that one of the most stressful things about cancer, particularly ours, is the fact that the tumor could not only change direction on a dime but that it could grow very quickly into any area of the brain, taking speech, eyesight, memories, the ability to walk, and many other executive functions, so the bulk of the stress comes from not knowing what your life could look like even next week (will you be running your ass off to keep up with a clinical trial schedule?  Will you be having a port installed to gwt Avastin infusions?  *shudder*). B was contemplating the fact that she herself had had" many situations in her own life when she did not know what to expect next, and, well, she had adjusted!" (this last was said in a cheery, sunny tone)

The implication here is, "Just be like me!"

To which I always want to reply, "Oh, really?  Well, get cancer first, and then we'll see!"  

The whole speech would be more like, "Did you wake up in a new reality where you suddenly have twenty years chopped off your life expectancy and you have a very highly increased chance of waking up tomorrow with no peripheral vision or are completely blind, or no longer able to walk, have no memory of the people who love you, aren't able to speak or understand language or read?  Because unless you live in that reality suddenly overnight, it is not the same.  And you don't get to tell anybody else "they will adjust" to that unless you have done it,  or that "they will adjust" to the knowledge that they have a foreign invader growing in their brain that is definitely 100% going to kill them.  If you don't live with that, you do not get to tell people "they will adjust to it".  To be in cancer club and tell people how to deal with it you have to HAVE CANCER.  Otherwise, sorry, it's just condescension and it's meaningless and it's rude.  I know you are a loving person so I want you to know how it sounds to us."

B was not trying to be rude or condescending, I know.  She was just unconsciously shielding.  When people have simple solutions or begin sentences with the word "Just" as in, "Well, you just have hope, that's all!" or, "I just believe God never gives you more than you are ready for!"  (OMG, THIS one, the very definition of trauma.  Another entry on this one later...)  When people want you to cheer up and "just " carry on, look out.  That's their shiny plastic shielding.  It's jagged, and it hurts.  Keep your distance.